Path 2

Path 2

The Return of Dr. Jay, Medicine Hipster

October 8, 2008

About seven years ago, we noted a press boomlet for Dr. Jay, the “chief imagineer” of Hello Health, whose modern approach to medicine was the talk of Billyburg. In August, Free Williamsburg announced that Dr. Jay would be taking health-related questions on their blog.

Since then the Doctor has been “In” at FreeWill twice. The first time, September 3, he was asked if you can get HPV on your hands by gripping subway poles. The Doc was ambivalent on that, but forthrightly declared that he hadn’t touched a subway pole, or a bathroom doorknob, in “years and years and years.” When pressed in comments, Dr. Jay admitted that “may have been a bit of a stretch,” but it had been months anyway — “I’m very talented at avoiding such measures — things like using your shirt, or paper towels in the bathroom…”

Today Dr. Jay is back, handling a query from a guy who claims that some girl was giving him a handjob at a party and it gave him a headache, and the same thing happened when he jerked off, was that weird? The message is unsigned, but we detect the hand of our old friend Haywood Jablome. Dr. Jay, bound by the Hippocratic oath, suggests that the pain might be due to “a simple neck muscle spasm,” and encourages his correspondent to seek medical attention. He also uses the ice-breaking phrase, “one-armed skiing on ya,” and thanks young Jablome for his question, because “it’s tough being out there all alone without easy access to someone who can help” — though whether he was talking about the correspondent or himself, we cannot say with certainty.

If we weren’t reading Free Williamsburg everyday already, the prospect of further Dr. Jay columns would force us to start.